The intellectual legacy of Gordon Tullock

Gordon Tullock is one of the world’s leading economists. Even more so than Chicago’s Gary Becker, Tullock has extended the rational choice model into areas previously judged to lie outside the realm of economics. This essay identifies Tullock’s contributions to constitutional political economy, public choice, bureaucracy, the law, and bio-economics. The essay focuses attention most especially on Tullock’s pioneering contributions to public choice, including his twenty-year editorship of Public Choice.     

The calculus of piratical consent: the myth of the myth of social contract

Is a genuine social contract mythical? I argue that pirates created genuine social contracts that established a system of constitutional democracy based on the same decision-making calculus and with the same effects that Buchanan and Tullock’s contractarian theory of government describes in The Calculus of Consent. Pirates’ constitutional democracy is the “holy grail” of social contract theory. It demonstrates that the contractarian basis of constitutional democracy is more than a mere analytic device or hypothetical explanation of how such a government could emerge. In pirates’ case, Buchanan and Tullock’s social contract theory describes how constitutional democracy actually did emerge.     

Gordon Tullock’s contributions to bioeconomics

This article discuss Gordon Tullock’s contributions to bioeconomics: His contributions to the bioeconomics of non-human societies, his impact on second and third generation bioeconomists, and the founding of the Journal of Bioeconomics.     

The Politics of Bureaucracy and the failure of post-war reconstruction

Gordon Tullock’s The Politics of Bureaucracy must be considered one of the most important works on bureaucracy ever written. In this paper, I argue that Tullock’s analysis of bureaucracy is as relevant as ever. To support this claim, I focus on U.S.-led reconstruction efforts which attempt to export liberal democracy via military occupation. Bureaucratic organizations play a key role in these reconstruction efforts and as such, Tullock’s analysis is directly relevant. It is argued that Tullock’s study clarifies not just the limits of bureaucratic activity, but also the importance of spontaneous orders for coordinating activities outside those limits and generating the very institutional context in which liberal democracy can evolve and sustain. The main conclusion is that the nature of public bureaucracy constrains the ability of the United States to exogenously impose liberal democratic institutions in foreign countries for the very reasons Tullock emphasized long ago.     

Agent-based modeling, public choice, and the legacy of Gordon Tullock

The future of modeling in public choice may be glimpsed by examining its evolution in economics. For problems that are influenced by heterogeneity of actors, social networks, or emergence—the arising of a complex system from simple phenomena, such as Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”—economists increasingly are turning to agent-based modeling. Agent-based modeling is a form of computational analysis that focuses on agents rather than on aggregates. In his long career as a founding scholar of public choice, Gordon Tullock repeatedly followed the agent-oriented approach of methodological individualism. Many of Tullock’s models are thus highly amenable to further exploration using that method. As agent-based modeling becomes more and more popular, the importance of Tullock’s work will continue to grow.     

Gordon Tullock’s contribution to bureaucracy

Gordon Tullock is justly valued for his contributions to understanding the nature of bureaucracy. Specifically, Tullock draws on his own experience in the US state department to develop a rational choice model of the hierarchical relationships between individuals within non-market organizations. The closest prior such model is that outlined by Machiavelli to characterize the predictable behavior of a sovereign and his immediate subordinates. Tullock’s 1957 book provided the foundation for my own 1971 contribution, and for an ensuing research program into the economic analysis of bureaucracy and representative government.     

Maximizing behavior & market forces: the microfoundations of spontaneous order theorizing in Gordon Tullock’s contributions to Smithian political economy

I explore the microfoundations of Gordon Tullock’s contributions to political economy and argue that his approach is consistent with the “invisible hand” theorizing of Adam Smith. While Smith (and Hayek) are celebrated for their emphasis on the “bright-side” of spontaneous social cooperation, Tullock emphasized the “dark-side” of social processes when the incentives are perverse and information is distorted. By explicating the microfoundations of Tullock’s rendering of Smithian political economy this paper will set the stage for a reassessment of Tullock as a spontaneous order theorist.     

The economic theory of rent seeking

Tullock’s concept of rent seeking was the first statement of a quantitative principle about the social costs of such activities as lobbying and favor seeking. As such, this part of Tullock’s legacy to modern economics is one of his most important contributions.     

Autocracy and coups d’etat

In this paper I first briefly survey Tullock’s contributions to the study of autocracy and coups d’etat. Tullock’s analysis of the coup d’etat is insightful. He suggested that those at the top could control those at the bottom with a proper system of incentive payments. Here I expand on that idea by asking the reverse question, not what keeps those at the bottom from rebelling, but what keeps those at the top from looting the regime? I begin by noting that shareholders of the modern widely held corporation face a similar problem: what keeps the CEO from looting the company when the market for corporate control is flawed, shareholders are too weak to exercise discipline, and the board is in the CEO’s pocket? I suggest the answer is provided by “internal governance”: the old need the young for good performance. I explain the financial crisis of 2008 as in part the result of the failure of this mechanism. I also explain the success of modern China this way: The Communist Party facilitates growth because its structure provides a way for superiors (the “old”) to trade with subordinates (the “young”). I have also expanded on Tullock’s analysis to ask what conditions might prevent the dictator from implementing his solution to the coup d’etat problem, thus explaining why coups d’etats actually occur. The basic reason is the weakness of the state. Japanese history provides two interesting illustrations of this: first the Tokugawa regime, where the people were over-controlled, and second, the Meiji constitution, implemented after the fall of the Tokugawa state. The Japanese problem after Meiji was that the military (the young) had no incentive to offer their loyalty to the old (the civilian regime), so the young acted on their own. The problem was the reverse of the Tokugawa regime’s: the Meiji constitution left the bottom with too much control over the top. There was no formal coup d’etat but a number of coup attempts were made and de facto the military increasingly constituted a state within a state. This reversal of authority apparently continued down the chain of command, ultimately with tragic consequences, most notably the invasion of Pearl Harbor.     

Gordon Tullock’s The Organization of Inquiry: A critical appraisal

The major themes of Gordon Tullock’s 1996 book The Organization of Inquiry are identified. Tullock’s treatment of the philosophy of science is criticized, as is his explanation for the backwardness of the social sciences relative to the natural sciences. The paper closes with a listing of some of Tullock’s proposals for the reform of science.     

Voting methods, problems of majority rule, and demand-revealing procedures

Gordon Tullock made fundamental conceptual contributions to the understanding of collective choices. Tullock balanced an optimism about the capacity of political choices to facilitate gains from exchange with a pessimism about the negative externalities attending having majorities control power and dictate choices for all. Tullock’s work on both sides of this divide is surveyed, examining both the problems of voting procedures, and the promise of the demand-revealing process he helped invent, in guiding the choice of political institutions.     

Gordon Tullock and Public Choice

Gordon Tullock is one of the founders of the field of public choice, of the Public Choice Society, and of the Public Choice Center. He is a coauthor with James M. Buchanan of one of the true classics in the public choice field—The Calculus of Consent. He has been one of the field’s most prolific scholars, with his research spanning virtually all dimensions of the public choice field. This article surveys his major contributions.     

Finding social dilemma: West of Babel, not east of Eden

This paper refracts Gordon Tullock’s The Social Dilemma onto a framework of spontaneous order theorizing, and finds the refraction to work well. The Social Dilemma reveals Gordon Tullock to be a theorist whose conceptualizations are anchored in a societal setting represented better by networks than by fields, and where societal outcomes emerge out of local networked interaction. The theoretical orientation of The Social Dilemma is redolent with spontaneous order themes, including his adoption of a field of vision that looks for social order west of Babel and not east of Eden. The paper also makes some secondary effort to compare The Social Dilemma with James Buchanan’s The Limits of Liberty.     

Litigation and legal evolution: does procedure matter?

Gordon Tullock’s critique of the common law runs against much of the conventional wisdom in the law and economics literature. In this paper we revisit one of the most controversial aspects of Tullock’s critique. By applying Tullock’s own model of rent-seeking to litigation, we study the effect of alternative procedural rules on civil litigation. Our results provide support for Tullock’s controversial critique of the common law, revealing an evolutionary bias in the production of legal rules by courts. We extend the standard litigation model to study the effects of alternative procedural systems on the evolution of the common law.     

Spontaneous order and the common law: Gordon Tullock’s critique

Gordon Tullock critiques two specific aspects of the common law system: the adversary system of dispute resolution and the common law process of rulemaking, contrasting them with the inquisitorial system and the civil law systems respectively. Tullock’s general critique is straightforward: litigation under the common law system is plagued by the same rent-seeking and rent-dissipation dynamics that Tullock famously ascribed to the process of legislative rent-seeking. The article concludes that Tullock’s critique of the adversary system appears to be stronger on both theoretical and empirical grounds than his critique of the common law system of rulemaking.     

Optimal voting rules under uncertainty

The theory of ‘constitutional’ choice of voting rules developed by Buchanan and Tullock is an extended to an explicit decision-theoretic form. Voters in the ‘constitutional’ position choose what they believe will be their optimal share or majority rule for making social decisions, by maximizing their individual expected utility from the anticipated social decisions, under conditions of uncertainty. The rule that maximizes expected social benefits depends upon (1) the expected distribution and intensity of preferences on future issues, and (2) the decisionmaking procedures and costs. ‘Decisionmaking’ and ‘external’ costs are shown to be interrelated. Following this analysis, failure to pass laws imposes ‘external’ costs in the same way that passing them does, so that the optimal majority may be lower when desirable laws are viewed as changing over time. Decisionmaking costs depend upon the way in which voters are persuaded to support or oppose bills, upon the distribution of preferences on bills, and on vote-trading possibilities. If vote-trading is almost costless, a wide range of decision rules has nearly equal social benefits. Finally, the model is used to discuss optimal voting rules for several decisionmaking bodies.     

Gordon Tullock and experimental economics

Gordon Tullock’s research has substantially influenced the development of economic science in general and experimental economics in particular. We present the first comprehensive survey of this significant achievement. We show how Tullock’s research in bioeconomics influenced later developments in neuroeconomics and how his pioneering work on rent-seeking generated a literature of laboratory tests of his hypothesis. We also describe Tullock’s own experiments and draw attention to his early insights on trust games.     

Tullock’s contest with reimbursements

We consider Tullock’s contest with reimbursements. It turns out that the winner-reimbursed contest maximizes net total spending while the loser-reimbursed contest minimizes net total spending. We investigate properties of contests with reimbursements and compare them with Tullock’s classic contest. Applications for R&D, government contracts, and elections are discussed.     

The life and times of Gordon Tullock

Gordon Tullock is a founding father of public choice. In an academic career that has spanned 50 years, he forged much of the research agenda of the public choice program and he founded and edited Public Choice, the key journal of public choice scholarship. Tullock, however did much more than this. This Special Issue of Public Choice honors Gordon Tullock in precisely the manner that he most values: the creation of new ideas across the vast range of his own scholarly interests.